Conversations With My Closet Self Expression through Fashion : Reclaiming your identity after a year of social distance WORDS BY ELISABETH HOWER
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his isn’t working, I said. “You look like a hippie cowgirl that wandered into a black tie gala and thought a scarf and rhinestone earrings would be enough to blend in.” I shook my head. So did the woman in the mirror across from me. How we’d be ready in 20 minutes, we had no idea. Tonight I was heading to a birthday party, the first major social event since things have begun to open in a post-pandemic world. In other words, it was my first major social event since rolling out of bed for a Zoom call was a major social event. Further, it was the fête of someone I barely knew, full of people I’d never met before. I’d asked more than one friend, “What the hell do I wear?” I hadn’t thought much about fashion the past year; the state of the world had captured my attention and nearly rendered me paralyzed. What was fashion during the pandemic, anyway? We’ve all seen the memes likening our attire to a mullet: Business on the top, party on the bottom, (aka sweatpants). I looked at my closet with bewilderment. Who even owned these clothes? How long has that flannel been hanging there? None of it felt like me. It felt foreign, or at least, from a lifetime ago. Which I supposed in some ways it was. Tell Marie Kondo to bring an industrial-size dumpster. It got me thinking. What will fashion be in this new, vaccinated world? Did our perspective shift? Are we simpler, have we lost the appetite for complex looks, in favor of ease arising out of… cough, cough, laziness? Or are we hungrier than ever to express? My instinct leaned toward the latter, but the problem was,
78 M. CITIZEN MAGAZINE | ISSUE 04
I didn’t know what it was that I wanted to express. “Style is a way to say who you are without having to speak.” -Rachel Zoe I’ve always felt permission to whisper, “screw it,” and mismatch patterns, pair polka dots with stripes…the nerve! But with re-entry into the world impending, the question was quickly becoming not what did I want to express, but who? Whether we like it or not, each of us faces a transition into this new normal. Our jobs have changed or disappeared. So have our relationships. Some moved work online and watched it blossom; others witnessed dreams and businesses crumble, never to recover. Cities experienced mass exodus as people sought the (relative) affordability of the countryside. I wondered, now that the world began to regain its footing, who would come back? The past year taught me to be more honest with myself and others, to set better boundaries, and perhaps most unexpected, that I’m not as much of an extrovert as I thought. I began to enjoy the time alone. And behind the scenes, confidence quietly grew. I liked the woman I was becoming. I just had no idea how to dress her. How to express her. “Create your own style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.” - Anna Wintour When things were just beginning to re-open,
